Happy 80th Anniversary Guardsman
CELEBRATION
By Mary Strope
Running through February 2016, a new exhibit at City College’s Rosenberg Library commemorates the school and its stories as told through award-winning newspaper The Guardsman.
“Celebrating 80 Years: City College is Still Your College” features narratives and ephemera from the Guardsman archives – starting in 1935, the year it was founded.
“I love the way the college is constantly being reinvented by the students, faculty and staff,” reference librarian Kate Connell, who curates many of the Rosenberg’s exhibitions, said. “Looking back over its history, I’m intrigued by all the mechanisms to make the college more inclusive.”
Originally titled Emanon, “no name” spelled backwards, the paper switched to The Guardsman after only a few issues.
Early editions focused on campus life including dances, sports, elections and community events and the never-ending campus cigarette smoking debate.
But the paper’s history also reflects City College’s unique niché as an urban community college located in one of the country’s most diverse cities.
Ruth Kay, whose family fled Nazi Germany during World War II, shares her story, while a headline from the same page ruminates on “The superiority of Negro street car conductors” under a cartoon of Adolph Hitler.
The push for a centralized campus for the “trolley car college” became a major theme in the paper’s
early days before the construction of the landmark science building in 1940.
“We got plenty of nothing,” complains a 1937 article on the far-flung City College locations of the time.
The school’s mission of inclusivity and job training are echoed throughout its pages.
Post World War II, married veterans lived in on-campus Quonset huts built under the GI Bill.
“ The Guardsman is really the prime source of reporting for the college,
both on student matters and on governance. Without it there would be little narrative of the college past, certainly not with the level and breadth of coverage that The Guardsman has given us,” Kox said.
“The opportunities that the GI Bill brought slightly obscure smaller steps to ensure access for women and minorities, or the importance of the college in broader society,” Christopher Kox said, who serves as interim associate dean in the library department and runs the archives.
“You will see that, in reading between the lines of the paper, and in the remarkable cast of characters studying or employed at City College of the decade following the war,” Kox said.
One 1977 headline proclaims “Transexuality is a reality.” The article profiles a transgender sex worker and City College student, and includes quotes from a registrar assuring students that sex had no bearing on admissions.
In 1968, The Associated Students Council founded an alternative paper, The Free Critic.
Pages of the student-run weekly featured news articles, poems, photography and art ruminating on war, labor and racism. From La Raza Unida to the Women’s Resource Center to the Black Student’s Union, the Critic featured groups that still play major roles at City College.
Hua Sheng, or China Voice, was a feature written in Chinese and published weekly in The Free Critic under the name Han for English speakers.
The handwritten section was Connell’s favorite find when researching for the exhibit.
“It was the first publication sponsored and supported by the Chinese Students of the Bay Area,” library technician Dana Kwan, para- phrasing a Han article said. “Despite initial opposition to printing a fea- ture in Chinese, it was published thanks to the support of the Associated Students and Chinese students at CCSF.”
Today, The Guardsman has expanded its scope under journalism department chair Juan Gonzales, publisher of the Mission District’s long-running neighborhood news- paper El Tecolote, to include community issues, a website, social media and color photos.
When it comes to issues like the fight for City College’s accreditation, The Guardsman provides in-depth coverage and has been long before major papers like The San Francisco Chronicle did.
“The Guardsman is really the prime source of reporting for the college, both on student matters and on governance. Without it, there would be little narrative of the col- lege past, certainly not with the level and breadth of coverage that The Guardsman has given us,” Kox said. The newspaper continually takes top honors at the Journalism Association of Community Colleges regional and state conventions, and regularly wins general excellence honors each semester.
After 80 years, and many shifts in the media world, The Guardsman still tells the story of a changing institution.
“The last 50 years have been about transition in media — radio, TV, internet, “ Kox said. “But at the end of the day, it’s all about the story.”
“Celebrating 80 Years: City College is Still Your College” will run on the 3rd floor of CCSF’s Rosen- berg Library through Feb 4, 2016. For more on the exhibition, see the library’s exhibit blog at www.ccsfexhib.wordpress.com
For more information on The Guardsman and the CCSF journalism department. Contact Juan Gonzales at (415) 239-3447 or learn more at facebook.com/citycollegeofsanfranciscojournalism
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